Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Back when I was in university I spent my summers working as an interpreter at Upper Canada Village. In my first summer, I spent a part of my time in a building called Crysler Hall. This is where the introductory slideshow was shown (yes, there was life before powerpoint). The presentation ran every 15 minutes in English on the one side of the building and every 15 minutes in French on the other. Now, any interpreter who has spent time in a building with a repeating soundtrack will tell you that after a while the words and music become permanently burned into your memory. Certain guides at our own Sinclair Inn Museum have been able to recite most of the monologues presented by the "ghosts" in the basement. In my case, I still have a large chunk of the Crysler Hall presentation in my memory.

The presentation essentially showed a year in the life of the village. When Fall came about, the narrator started to wrap things up with the biblical quote "to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven". After hearing this hundreds of times I ended up spending the better part of the summer with the Byrds song Turn! Turn! Turn! stuck in my head. There is something about the current transition that we are going through that brings all of this to mind. In fact, at this time of year I think I still half consciously walk around with these words and music in my mind.

Despite the fact that I am not quite ready to let go of Summer, all of the signs are lined up that Autumn is on the way. The air has started to turn a bit more crisp in the evenings, the Annapolis Heritage Society's summer staff have mostly left for their respective universities and I ate my first local apple of the season yesterday. We are also going through a typical transition in our annual visitor patterns. When we get close to Labour Day we stop seeing large numbers of family groups coming through our doors. Within a week or so, we will start to see more retired couples and groups who are able to enjoy shoulder season travel. To be honest, I quite enjoy these visitors. Our shoulder season visitors usually have a bit more time to chat and learn about things at the museum. While I could do with a bit more warm weather, I must admit that "to everything there is a season".